Official Language Act No. 33 of 1956 (Ceylon) - Ceylon After Independence

Ceylon After Independence

Ceylon gained dominion status in 1948 with a peaceful struggle, the passage to sovereignty from the British to the Sri Lankan subaltern elite being a peaceful one. For the first years of independence there was an attempt to balance the interests of the elites of the main communities: the Sinhalese and the Tamils. Most Sinhalese did, however, harbour the view that the Tamils had enjoyed a privileged position under the British. This was mainly due to the British policy of "divide and rule". In 1949, at the behest of the foreign plantation owners, the government disenfranchised the Indian Tamil plantation workers, who accounted for 12% of the population.

In 1951, the ambitious Solomon Bandaranaike broke with his party, the conservative United National Party (UNP), and created a new centrist party, the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP). In 1955, the SLFP decided to break ranks with the general consensus on the left to have both Sinhalese and Tamil as official languages to campaign on the slogan "Sinhala Only".